I've moved from Photoshop CS3 to CS5 and have just found Adobe in their (lack of) wisdom have removed the File>Automate>PDF Presentation feature and replaced it with the lame Output option in Bridge. Unfortunately, that doesn't do what I want. I can't see any option for outputting my files at 100% print size, just a selection of presets like '2-up greeting card', 'triptych' or 'maximum size'. Then you just get a 'quality' (ie resolution) setting.

In CS3 I could go File>Automate>PDF Presentation and select multiple files, then create a press-ready file from that. I often create print advertisements where there are, say, half a dozen variants to run over a period of 6 months. From CS3, I could send the printer a single file with all the adverts in the order they were to run in. Similarly, I could send my client a single proof file with all the ads in at real-size.

Have I missed something in the Bridge Output module, or is it really as lame as it appears?

I realise in CS5 I can still 'save as' and get all the necessary pre-press settings that way, but only for a single file at a time. The Bridge Output mess is useless for this from my point of view

I thought when software vendors release new versions, they are supposed to include new features, not remove valuable existing ones. Flashy stuff like content aware fill is fun, but removing basic, useful productivity features seems bizarre. I could sort of understand that thinking in a consumer product like Elements, but not in professional software like PS.

This basically leaves me with two options. Work in CS5, then close my files, then reopen them in CS3 to create my PDFs - or dump CS5 altogether and revert to using CS3 for everything.

"Optional plug-ins not installed in Photoshop CS5 and downloadable online

* PDF Presentation and Web Photo Gallery can be found in Bridge CS5 in the Adobe Output Model (AOM). If you want to download the Photoshop CS5 versions of PDF Presentation and Web Photo Gallery, please see the following document for information: go.adobe.com/kb/ts_cpsid_82824_en-us. This download package will contain the plug-in along with Optional Plug-ins Read Me. "

However, when you get to the download page, these are the only optional plugins available:

I ran into the same problem. I hit F1 for help and there claims to be a picture package plugin. The web site gives you the runaround. The link for the program takes you to an area that doesn't have picture package. Not sure if picture package does a PDF from multiple images anyway.

It's seem to basic a fuction and I'm very upset they removed this. Lucky I left CS3 on my computer. Imagine, I have to go backward to get my work done. Lost an hour trying to figure this all out. Sorry Adobe, this is NOT going to help your future sales. This is not the only issue either.

The 30 day trial is there so people can download it to try it out. If you would have downloaded the trial and used it for 30 days you would have discovered all the problems you wrote about and would have saved you a lot of money.

I downloaded the trial PS CS5 and after 30 days there was nothing really added to make me want to upgrade from PS CS4 extended. All I am saying is that the 30 day trial is there for people to check out for free, to see if they have a need for it and nothing is broken where it will be a show stopper for their business and such.

I'm absolutely dumbfounded by Adobe's decision to remove these basic, bread-and-butter features. It seems that Adobe has no perspective that the software it makes are tools that people have invested tens of thousands of hours mastering and depend on for their livelihood. Yes, we're locked into these tools because of their ubiquity (and in the case of PS, superiority), and I won't cry wolf and threaten to use something else, but god, talk about sewing the seeds of ill-will amongst your customers...

Look in CS5 Bridge. There's some options there for web and pdf slideshows and you may find what you need/used to do there. I feel your pain, just a few weeks into CS5 and while there are some nice new features I really bought it for 64 bit performance - I was quite happy with the CS3 UI. So, some stuff got moved to Bridge and some got cut out completely. I may just reload CS3 for some of the older web gallery things. Hang in there though, it will get better...

The reason behind moving PDF Presentation to Bridge is that Bridge is designed for working with collections of files, whereas Photoshop is primarily used to edit individual files. One of the constant struggles we face in Photoshop is trying to keep it from overwhelming people with its complexity, and moving PDF Presentation was an attempt to help in this effort by moving one isolated feature out of Photoshop. Creating multi-page, multi-document PDFs belongs in Bridge, and quite honestly, never did belong in Photoshop.

That said, we do listen to customers, and we do try to be responsive to issues like this. I realize some people are unhappy with this decision, but I believe it is an opportunity for Adobe to make PDF Presentation even better and more useful within Bridge. If you have specific suggestions, I strongly urge you to let us know, either here or on the Bridge forum.

Thanks; I genuinely appreciate the reply. I've never really used Bridge before, with the exception of launching it by accident via keyboard shortcut, cursing and force quitting it. It's a big, one-window interface that takes over the screen with a different UI than the Finder, which to me is so crazy, that an application for file management would ask you to learn an entirely different interface for navigating your file system -- tiny scroll bars, no sidebar favourites, no column view (!!). It destroys flow and totally takes me out of what I'm doing.

Anyway. What I would like to be able to do is create a PDF presentation using the files I currently have open in Photoshop, without saving them. Maybe Bridge can do it, but I can't figure it out.

Sorry for the ranting -- Photoshop is obviously a great piece of software overall, and your team is doing a great job. But I do feel like ever since the "Suite" philosophy was introduced with CS1, ideological decisions have been trumping pragmatic ones. You'd be much better off paving cowpaths than trying to enforce a 'right' way of doing things, imho.

That said, we do listen to customers, and we do try to be responsive to issues like this. I realize some people are unhappy with this decision, but I believe it is an opportunity for Adobe to make PDF Presentation even better and more useful within Bridge. If you have specific suggestions, I strongly urge you to let us know, either here or on the Bridge forum.

The old HTML Photoshop Web Photo Galleries templates could easily be customize for ones web site. The newer Flash Base Web Based galleries both in Photoshop CS3 and Bridge CS5 can not be customized well. The only way to customized galleries well is to use Photoshop Scripting where one can get at images meta data and create Web Galleries with required information like links, e-mail, titles, descriptions, exif and create customized xml files for the capable flash web gallery viewers like Airtight's SimpleViewer which is also distributed with Photoshop. Adobe's SimpleViewer Web Flash support is very limited to say the least. Does Adobe plan to enhance the Bridge Web Gallery support, add descent customization compared to the limited dialog that now exists. Maybe add some type of user scripting or action exit during the creation of the XML control file so the user can add perhaps a cdata statement for each image in the gallery.

Currently I have modified one of Jeffrey Tranberry's (Adobe employee) scripts the he created for Airtight's web site to generated Flash web galleries. Modified to create the XML and HTML files I need for Web Flash galleries like Ws-Slideshow and Simpleviewer. I have tried other Airtight viewers but they do not proforrm well when you have a lot of images for a web gallery.

Scripting can not be used from the Bridge when generating Web Photo Galleries so customization is limited to only what Adobe provides which is poor at best. Currently Photoshop is more powerful then the Bridge when is come to multi document web galleries.

Have I missed something in the Bridge Output module, or is it really as lame as it appears?

IMO its really as lame as it appears.

Dave you may want to look at my Photo Collage Toolkit IMO contact sheets are like collages you could easily create a template for the type of contact sheets you want. You would most likely need to create portrait and landscape templates or run a script that would rotate all image to either landscape or portrait. The batch script in my toolkit can populate your images into the templates you have created. The collages will be saved as PSD file all image are placed in as smart object layer and are transformed into the collage images spaces so you full size un-cropped images are there. Images may looked cropped because of the templates you created. If your images do not have the same aspect ratio collage template images for your transformed images are masked with a layer mask in a sense cropping the full size placed image. You can optionally stamp the file name on the images and add layer styles. The script also has an option to save the collage as a PDF file addition. http://www.mouseprints.net/old/dpr/PhotoCollageToolkit.html

Please understand that many people, myself included, build an entire, very specific workflow around the tools that are supposed to be developed to make our lives easier. We all have fast turnarounds, from shooting to presenting to clients, and every time you guys change something like this, we have to completely readjust our workflow, which takes time.

I think the Output function in Bridge is clunky and half-finished at best, and it still doesn't address the need for making a contact sheet or PDF presentation from open documents.

If I'm pitching a client and need to use files from multiple jobs, I now have to create an album in Bridge, using ONLY the saved versions of files. I can't edit anything, otherwise I have to save an additional version, and add that to the album. This is a huge pain in the ***.

Or, what if I want to create contact sheets, but turn some of the images black and white? Forget the hassle of having to create in Bridge then import to Photoshop, but what if it's multiple pages? I can't re-export as a PDF. Completely screwed.

I understand that things were done because they made sense to the programmers, but I think there needs to be more consultation with working photographers.

Only in the sense that if you stick to something, like say, learning CS5's feature set you may actually find some benefit to the changes. OTOH, I can be as crabby as the next person about stupid interface changes but life's too short to stay pissed...

But I think the issue is that functionality has been lost -- you can't create PDF presentations with open files anymore. If that's not part of your workflow it may seem trivial, but it is a major issue for me.

fyi, I discovered this feature had been removed while on the phone with a client, against a print deadline that was < 30 minutes away:

Me: Hold on a sec and I'll shoot you over what I've been working on.

Client: Great, hurry up.

Me: Wait, where's the... there used to be...

Client: Hurry up.

Me: Christ, they took out the thing where you used to be able to...

Client: I don't have time for this, send it over when you figure things out. (hangs up)

So yeah, lives obviously weren't hanging in the balance, but I do look incompetent to my client, and I feel let down by my tools. My only point is that I don't think this is an unusual situation, and it's the type of thing that should be considered in the meetings where these decisions to (re)move existing features are made. Ask yourselves: will this change potentially make our customers look like jerks in front of their bosses or clients?

Please understand that many people, myself included, build an entire, very specific workflow around the tools that are supposed to be developed to make our lives easier. We all have fast turnarounds, from shooting to presenting to clients, and every time you guys change something like this, we have to completely readjust our workflow, which takes time.

I think the Output function in Bridge is clunky and half-finished at best, and it still doesn't address the need for making a contact sheet or PDF presentation from open documents.

If I'm pitching a client and need to use files from multiple jobs, I now have to create an album in Bridge, using ONLY the saved versions of files. I can't edit anything, otherwise I have to save an additional version, and add that to the album. This is a huge pain in the ***.

Or, what if I want to create contact sheets, but turn some of the images black and white? Forget the hassle of having to create in Bridge then import to Photoshop, but what if it's multiple pages? I can't re-export as a PDF. Completely screwed.

I understand that things were done because they made sense to the programmers, but I think there needs to be more consultation with working photographers.

If the decision were made by the programmers, I can assure you the feature would have been left exactly where it was; that would mean zero work for us. I wrote nearly all the PDF code in Photoshop, and ripping out all my hard work on PDF Presentation was not exactly a thrill.

I appreciate the concerns you raised (and you're not the first to express frustration about this), but decisions like this are not made in a vacuum. We hear complaints constantly about the ever-growing size and complexity of the application, the long launch times, etc. and there does reach a point where decisions about what to do about it must be made. While there is a temptation to keep adding things into Photoshop, it is not always the right thing to do (and frankly, we programmers are as guilty of this as anyone). Photoshop is one application out of many in the Creative Suite, and finding the right balance among those applications about where features belong necessarily involves compromises and hard choices.

No, starting in Photoshop CS2, all PDF functionality moved into the application, there is no PDF plugin anymore. This was done to support the PDF features added in CS2, such as PDF smart objects, rasterizing multiple pages, lossless raster image extraction, password protection, downsampling support, PDF Presets, etc.

Users expect new release to be compatible with previous versions of a software product. When it is not you break users code and force them to change to how they have to work its very unprofessional. As you are part of the Adobe programming team it should be part of you job to make your companies policy makers understand user expectations. Your not doing and good job and Adobe programmers are not doing a good job with regression testing and have introduced many bugs in the last two releases CS4 and CS5. I skipped CS4 for when I read you were putting in GPU support I knew there would be many bugs added related to video card support. I was not expecting GUI changes that would break code or have old featured that work now have bugs because of new features added that should not have effect the old feature that worked. CS3 is still the best version of Photoshop around IMO....

I think it was a bad move removing PDF Presentation as this was scriptable, now it has moved to Bridge it is not! There are numerous people that cann't upgrade from Photoshop CS3 as they use automation (scripts).

JJ, thanks for your comments. As I said earlier, we do take feedback like this very seriously, and we do strive to make Photoshop as good as it can be. I'm sure you can appreciate that Photoshop is a huge effort, requiring hundreds of programmers, testers, UI designers, tech writers, and product managers. And unlike "the good old days", Photoshop is not simply a standalone application anymore, but is part of the larger set of applications that make up the Creative Suite (which adds many more technical and marketing voices to the mix.)

John Warnock, one of the co-founders of Adobe, used to tell the engineering teams that Adobe's customers will forgive them when they change something, if once users get over the initial discomfort of having their workflow disrupted, they find their new workflow is actually better. It sounds like this a case where the new workflow is not better. What I am hearing from you and others on this thread is that the Bridge implementation of PDF Presentation and Contact Sheet are not as functional or useable as the previous Photoshop versions of these, in part because scriptability is important to people's workflows. While I can't speculate on exactly how or when we might address your concerns, I can promise to raise this issue within Adobe to make sure the appropriate people are aware of it.

PDFerguson, I want to thank you for your comments. It is nice to hear an Adobe employee acknowledge that there are some legitimate user concerns over the features that where removed from Photoshop in CS4. Here are the concerns I have.

1. Contact Sheet, Picture Package, Web Galleries,and PDFPresentation could all be scripted. Like Paul Riggott, I am active in the Photoshop scripting community and have had to advise users or clients to not upgrade or to downgrade if they wished to automate the functionally those scripts/plug-in provided.

2. Although Contact Sheet and Picture Package are still available as an optional download, it seems clear that there will come a time when they are not. Bridge does not offer Picture Package's functionally.

3. Some of the features of Contact Sheet were merged with PDFPresentation in the Bridge Output Module. Contact Sheet has the option to create a multi-layer document that can be saved in any format. Bridge only saves as a flatten PDF. Photoshop also had an advantage when dealing with images from multiple folder when creating contacts sheets or PDF.

4. Web Galleries were easier to customize.

I think that saying 'Photoshop is not a multiple image app' is a lame reason for removing these features. However I understand the reason for the move to Bridge and am not asking that these be put back into Photoshop. I am asking that I be able to do what I was able to do with CS3 in CS6( or whatever it will be called ).

The thing you must realize is that some of us HATE bridge. I won't even load it on my machine. There is really no use for it in my workflow. and I hate having to move from one program to another anyway to do something like a quick PDF slideshow that I am comfortable with and have been using for years in photoshop. This plugin can't atke up any room and having it there is not hurting anything. There is no reason to eliminate functionality of one program just to force people to use another. Also I just loaded Photoshop CS5 and found this is the first version not to have a goodies folder! you could have at least left all the eliminated functions like Web Gallery, contact sheet Etc. available on there as you did in CS4. And why isn't PDF presentaion available online?

You justify removing an extremely vaulable and timesaving feature so you can add "content aware fill" and the puppet warp, which anyone could easly duplicate in under a minute, as hard choices. I guess highlighting those new fancy features make it easier to sell your product and to hell with everyone that was using PDF presentation. The bridge workaround is joke.

I have been discussing this with the Photoshop engineering management as I promised. I don't have anything to report yet, but am continuing to push the issue. If you or anyone else reading this thread has feedback about PDF Presentation or Layer Comps to PDF, please post them here. I'm specifically looking for how this affects your workflows and/or decisions about upgrading Adobe software.

I have been rather vocal about this in the past, so I think my views are already known. But, to reiterate here, this feature was used ALOT by those in forensics (including police, sheriff, and other government agencies). The feature was perfect for making court presentations - in which a multi-layered document would be created - some layers would be photographs of a scene, piece of evidence, or frames from a video; some layers would be annotations - circles, arrows, etc.; and some would be text to identify the people and objects, Then, layer comps created, and exported directly to a multi-page PDF document. These could end up being documents from two to several hundred pages. Without Layer Comps to PDF, the Comps are exported to individual files (sometimes hundreds) then those are merged into a single multi-page document, taking more steps and creating potentially hundreds of files that some agencies cannot then delete (because of their protocols). Additionally, it is not as easy to create a document the exact size of the original images and make a multi-page PDF that has the same dimensions and is uncompressed with the Output Module as it was with Layer Comps to PDF.

Although I personally upgrade with each cycle, I know may police agencies who I consult with or who have taken my training have not upgraded since CS3 because of this issue. Others (including myself) keep CS3 on our machines just for this feature.

I personally used PDF presentation all the time in my workflow, usually to make a presentation to send to a client.

There are many adjustments I can't do in camera raw, so I would very frequently generate a contact sheet, make color/grading adjustment layers on the contact images, then re-output to a multi-page PDF. This is now impossible.

To achieve the same end, I have to open each image, individually alter them, save them as separate files, then go back to Bridge and use the horrible Output>PDF function, creating a PDF of the newly saved images. Waste of time and hard drive space.

OR - I would create custom PDF presentations to pitch jobs. I would collect different images from various jobs I've done in the past, and typically alter them a bit to fit the job I'm bidding on. Then I'd create the PDF with each image on a separate page.

Now, I have to save a new version of every file I'm including, then create a common Album in Bridge (since they're all stored in different job folders), then again use the Output>PDF thing, making a 1x1 image-per-page PDF document. Also a waste of time and hard drive space.

Perhaps Adobe wants us to use Acrobat to create PDFs - anyone who works in production has barely enough time to eat lunch, let alone learn another piece of software just to do simple tasks our previous software did already, and did well.

Speaking of the horrible Output thing - the original Contact Sheet II used to have all kinds of simple goodies that are somehow overlooked in the Output function. Even simple things like telling us how many pages we were generating before we made the contacts. Gone. And why can we not directly output a contact sheet to Photoshop? Why do we have to save it as a PDF first? Apparently saving as 100% quality keeps the images uncompressed, but why make us go through 2 more steps (saving, then re-opening) to get our images? Is this "improvement"?

As with many of the other people posting, I have to keep CS3 on my computer because CS5 makes things difficult. And frankly, the only reason I upgraded to CS5 is because CS3 can't open the Canon 5D Mark II RAW files - something Adobe clearly did on purpose.

I'm sure there are many wonderful people creating the software, but there are obviously some who aren't talking to photographers and other people who rely on Photoshop to keep their business running. Functionality is sacrificed, and we're strong-armed into upgrading.

I am one of the many users George mentioned in his post who has used Photoshop in my forensic work for over a decade. Although we have upgraded a few machines in the lab to CS4 extended we also left CS3 on those machines, and we have not upgraded some others since CS3 because of this very issue. I have no plans to upgrade to CS5 in the lab at the moment either, as there are no significant changes that effect my workflow; a few efficiency improvements and some cool "wow", but nothing that substantially impacts us.

I'm a forensic video analyst, not a forensic photographer, so unlike George's workflow I do not use bridge regularly. Forcing me to create additional files (sometimes hundreds) and launch an entirely separate program to accomplish Layer Comps to PDF is rather cumbersome and time consuming. Personally, if I'm in a situation where I only have CS4 or CS5 I skip the limited PDF capability from Bridge and simply go to Acrobat to create the PDF. In either case it requires more time and resources, so I am one of the many who would greatly appreciate seeing automate to PDF and Layer Comps to PDF return.

Hi Paul, I've just upgraded from CS1 to CS4 and am gutted by this ommision. Furthermore I cant use Bridge because it consistently beachballs after 3 seconds. A lot of people like me dont actually want bridge, its just more irrelevant garbage on our HD's.As I said it doesnt even run (on my 2009 imac).

I'm reduced to reinstalling CS1. I actually sold my CS1 and will be transferring my serial number for it so I'm kinda screwed now aren't I?

...I actually sold my CS1 and will be transferring my serial number for it so I'm kinda screwed now aren't I?...

You might be screwed if you used that CS1 license to get the discounted upgrade price for CS4. If that was the case, you had no legal right to sell off CS1. CS1 would be part of your current CS4 license.

I've got over 10 Adobe licenses, including the Photoshop7>CS1>Cs4 upgrade path. Its actually a seperate Creative Suite bundle I have a buyer for, so you're right, and my statement wasn't quite right, and if anyone from Adobe is suspect of this, please check my account and you can see all of them are registered to my account.

Well spotted though, you're completely right. I will always have a CS1 photoshop to fall back on after all. You bring good news.

Hi there, well in my case i use that PDF presentation to compile books after they have been scanned, this is a precious tool in the proofreading world, also i consider that it can be improved to be more functional and can be fully integrated with OCR massive production.

I have that new CS5 and i really consider that the only valuable addition on that version is the new 3D platform, but still too buggy to be useful...

I think adobe have to seriously define better its priorities when a new piece of software came out, cuz its not a very wise move to "sacrifice" workflow in specific and critical areas to improve another that still is on development and is not as important...

I suggest that in the new "suite" Illustrator evolve definitely to an Adobe "Vectorial" and relieve PS from the 3D things...

We here at the San Francisco Police Deapartment, Multi Media Forensics Unit still have CS3 on one of our workstations for this very reason. With our increasing case load and back log, any hick-up in work flow causes a very painful ripple effect. Unlike skipping a rock across a lake, the elimination of Layer Comps to PDF was like dropping a boulder straight down. PLEASE consider bringing it back!